Likelihood to Recommend Amazon Relational Database Service is a perfect fit for everyone who is seeking for an high-performance cloud-based database service. No matter if Postgres, Oracle, or any other type of relational database. Amazon RDS is our first choice for any kind of database requirement in the cloud. Especially I like the scalability.
Read full review First, get the database on Oracle. If you are in an Oracle stack, it would be much better to use the Oracle products. If you are driving a Ferrari, you wouldn’t put a Mercedes engine in it. If you are writing a query, you cannot rely on other brands. Since I'm an architect, when I look for a product, I look for performance. The installation is easy because it comes out-of-the-box and you just start using it. Previous to Oracle Exadata, we were using a normal Oracle RAC service. We were just waiting for this product to come out. I'm currently writing a data warehouse on Exadata. Before this solution, we were aiming for this to be completed by 8 a.m., when our ETLs would finish. With the help of Exadata's special features, this was reduced to 3 a.m. This solution allows us to bring more data within the same time period. It provides us with more subject areas that provide more reports to our users. Our ETL times reduced to 65%, then to 50%. Read full review Pros Automated Database Management: We use it for streamlining routine tasks like software patching and database backups. Scalability on Demand: we use it to handle traffic spikes, scaling both vertically and horizontally. Database Engine Compatibility: It works amazingly with multiple database engines used by different departments within our organization including MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and Oracle. Monitoring: It covers our extensive monitoring and logging, and also has great compatibility with Amazon CloudWatch Read full review Customize-able for specific functionality optimized for combination of online transaction or analytical processing. Ability to serve mix workloads with resource management feature enables prioritizing allocation for certain workload. Scale-able on-premise with compatibility for cloud deployment offers flexible solution for organization considering to transition from on-premise solution. Read full review Cons It is a little difficult to configure and connect to an RDS instance. The integration with ECS can be made more seamless. Exploring features within RDS is not very easy and intuitive. Either a human friendly documentation should be added or the User Interface be made intuitive so that people can explore and find features on their own. There should be tools to analyze cost and minimize it according to the usage. Read full review Patching can often become quite involved and convoluted. It should be more transparent and straightforward. Storage metrics can be difficult and time consuming to obtain. Basic administrative functions can be hard to repair when discovered. Vendor support can take a while to obtain. Generally several attempts are necessary to reach the right area of vendor expertise. Read full review Likelihood to Renew We do renew our use of Amazon Relational Database Service. We don't have any problems faced with RDS in place. RDS has taken away lot of overhead of hosting database, managing the database and keeping a team just to manage database. Even the backup, security and recovery another overhead that has been taken away by RDS. So, we will keep on using RDS.
Read full review Usability I've been using AWS Relational Database Services in several projects in different environments and from the AWS products, maybe this one together to EC2 are my favourite. They deliver what they promise. Reliable, fast, easy and with a fair price (in comparison to commercial products which have obscure license agreements).
Read full review Support Rating I have only had good experiences in working with AWS support. I will admit that my experience comes from the benefit of having a premium tier of support but even working with free-tier accounts I have not had problems getting help with AWS products when needed. And most often, the docs do a pretty good job of explaining how to operate a service so a quick spin through the docs has been useful in solving problems.
Read full review Online Training the online training & digital content available on the web from AWS was having sufficient information to deploy and run the service
Read full review Alternatives Considered In a few words, we are just to confortable working with oracle and sql server. Using RDS add another layer of distributed database in order to backup everything we have in case of a disaster and also complies with authorities locally and internacionally. All database we use, are local in custom servers that we maintain, but we agree to expand this.
Read full review Oracle Exadata Database Machine had the best performance overall hands down. It clearly beat the competition and we were seeing 1000X improvement on
SAP HANA . Oracle Exadata Database Machine beat that without us refactoring our code. To achieve that in HANA, we had to refactor the code somewhat. Now this was for our limited POC of 5 use cases. Given the large number of stored procedures we had in Sybase, we need to capture more production metrics but we are seeing incredible performance.
Gene Baker Vice President, Chief Architect, Development Manager and Software Engineer
Read full review Return on Investment RDS is costly and thus small business should avoid it as it might not be worthful (in ROI perspective) Downtime is very low and there are automated backups thus we dont have to worry much about technical stuff and can focus more on marketing and sales Due to various automated features such as automated backup etc we dont need a huge technical team thus reducing the cost of maintaining a huge technical team , Read full review Single support from a single vendor with both machine and database from Oracle, which is costing us less. With Exadata, we need less technical manpower and less technical support. A business transaction with the integrated and centralized database helps us focus on other business needs. We don't need to buy additional licenses and Hardware for the next 3 to 5 years. Habeeb Akbar Sr. Product Manager/Consultant for Software Technologies and Infrastructure
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